Corner fastener and roller assembly for sliding door frames

ABSTRACT

A ONE-PIECE CORNER FASTENER FOR SECURING THE STILE AND RAIL TOGETHER OF A SLIDING DOOR FRAME, THE CORNER FASTENER BEING MADE OF PLASTIC AND HAVING AN INTEGRAL ROLLERCARRYING ARM WITH SUFFICIENT RESILIENCY TO YIELDINGLY HOLD THE ROLLER IN ENGAGEMENT WITH A DOOR FRAME GUIDING TRACK. ADJUSTABLE STOP MEANS LIMITS THE EXTENT OF MOVEMENT OF THE ROLLER AWAY FROM THE DOOR FRAME GUIDING TRACK.

Nov. 16 1971 RU 3,619,947

CORNER FASTENER AND ROLLER ASSEMBLY FOR SLIDING DOOR FRAMES Filed Feb. 12. 1970 INVLENTORA Amow JZBuRuM #15 AffoRA/EY WIN/4M 7?. P/PER United States Patent Office 3,619,947 CORNER FASTENER AND ROLLER ASSEMBLY FOR SLIDING DOOR FRAMES Harold J. Burum, San Leandro, Calif., assignor to Kenneth P. Byrd, West Sacramento, and Joseph G. White, North Highlands, Calif., fractional part interest to each Filed Feb. 12, 1970, Ser. No. 10,895 Int. Cl. E05d 13/02 US. Cl. 49-425 2 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A one-piece corner fastener for securing the stile and rail together of a sliding door frame, the corner fastener being made of plastic and having an integral rollercarrying arm with sufficient resiliency to yieldingly hold the roller in engagement with a door frame guiding track. Adjustable stop means limits the extent of movement of the roller away from the door frame guiding track.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION (1) Field of the invention Sliding door frames are constructed from tubular stock that is rectangular in cross section. Corner fasteners are used and have arms that are receivable in the mitered ends of two adjacent door frame stiles and rails. A separate roller carrying arm is pivotally connected to the corner fastener and a roller mounted on the arm is free to move through an opening in the door frame rail and is yieldingly held in contact with the door frame guide track by a leaf spring. My invention provides a one piece plastic corner fastener and the roller carrying arm is integral therewith and is adapted to resiliently hold the roller in contact with the door frame guide track when the device is mounted in the frame and the latter is installed in a door opening.

(2) Description of the prior art The patent to Edward J. Andres, No. 3,283,444, issued Nov. 8, 1966, pertains to a sliding door corner and roller assembly, and discloses the assembly as comprising an angle bracket that interconnects a door frame stile with its associate rail. A separate roller carrier has a bifurcated arm with aligned openings and a separate operation is necessary to slip the bifurcated portion of the arm over a web on the assembly and guide the arm until the openings are aligned with pivot pins on the web whereupon the bifurcated portion will snap into position and cause the pivot pins to enter the openings for pivotally connecting the arm to the assembly. A leaf spring is carried by the arm and yieldingly holds the roller in contact with the door frame guide track when the door frame is mounted in the door opening.

My invention by making the roller carrying arm integral with the corner fastener does away with the necessity of making a separate arm and also saves on construction costs by omitting the operation of connecting the arm to the corner fastener. Furthermore, cost is again reduced by doing away with the need for a leaf spring because the resiliency of the plastic material forming the integral arm is suflicient to keep the roller, carried by the arm, in contact with the door frame guide track.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of my invention is to reduce the number of parts in a corner fastener for a sliding door frame and to further reduce the number of operations in assembling the corner fastener in the frame. This is accomplished by molding a plastic corner fastener and making the roller carrying arm an integral part of the fastener. Then the assembling of the corner fastener in a sliding door frame will not only connect the door stile with the adjacent door rail, but will also correctly position the roller on the arm with an opening in the door rail so that the roller will engage with the door frame guiding track when the frame is mounted in a door opening. A leaf spring for yieldingly urging the arm in a direction to keep the arm roller in contact with the guide track is not required because the material forming the integral arm provides the arm with suflicient resiliency to accomplish this.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIG. 1 is an elevational view of a sliding door frame and upper and lower guide tracks for the door. One corner of the door has been broken away to Show my corner fastener and roller assembly mounted in place.

FIG. 2 is an enlargement of the dot-dash circled portion 2 of FIG. 1 and shows the corner fastener and roller assembly mounted in the corner of a sliding door frame.

FIG. 3 is a vertical transverse section taken along the line 3-3 of FIG. 2 and illustrates the roller riding on the lower guide track.

FIG. 4 is an isometric view of the corner fastener and roller assembly.

FIG. 5 is a horizontal section through the device and is taken along the line 5-5 of FIG. 4, to show the adjustable stop means for limiting the swing of the roller carrying arm.

FIG. 6 is a horizontal section through the roller and its supporting arm and is taken along the line 6-6 of FIG. 4.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT In carrying out my invention, I illustrate a sliding door indicated generally at A in FIG. 1. This door may have a glass or screen B mounted in a metal frame comprising two side stiles 1 and 2 and two rails, an upper rail 3 and a lower rail 4. FIG. 2 shows portions of the door stile 2 and rail 4 in section on a larger scale. The adjacent ends of the stile and rail are mitered so as to form a right angle corner when they are connected together.

My single piece corner fastener and roller carrying arm is preferably molded from plastic, such as nylon, and it consists of an L-shaped body C and an integral semiresilient roller-carrying arm D, see FIGS. 2 and 4. The vertical leg 5 of the body C is received in the stile 2 of the door frame A while the horizontal leg 6 is received in the adjacent end of the rail 4. Both the stile 2 and the rail 4 have cross sections that are rectangular in shape and the legs 5 and 6 of the corner fastener C fit snugly into these members. All four corners of the sliding door frame A are fitted with the same type corner fastener C, see FIG. 1.

It will be noted from FIG. 2 that the semi-resilient arm D carries a roller E at its outer end and the rail 4 has an opening 7 in its lower wall through which the roller projects a suflicient distance to yieldingly ride on a lower guide track F for the sliding door. FIG. 1 shows two rollers E on the lower door rail 4 riding on the lower track F, while two additional rollers E project through openings in the upper door rail 3 and yieldingly engage with an upper guide track G for the door. The free end 8 of the resilient arm D is U-shaped in cross section, see FIGS. 3 and 4. The semi-resilient arms D on the corner fasteners C for the lower rail 4 will support the weight of the door frame and still have sufficient resiliency to cause their rollers to follow any irregularities in the track F.

I provide a unique method for securing the roller E to the two side walls 9-9 of the U-shaped end 8 of the resilient arm D, see FIGS. 4 and 6. The two side walls 9-9 have key hole slots 10-10 whose entrance ends face toward the guide track F, see FIG. 2. The edges of these slots are knife-shaped in cross section, see FIG. 6, and they are designed to receive a shaft H for the roller E that has an annular groove 11 at each end. The shaft is preferably made from a plastic, such as nylon, and so is the roller E. The edges of the reduced portions of the key hole slots 10 will yield slightly and permit the shaft to be inserted into the slots after it is connected to the roller and in this way the shaft will snap into place when it reaches the enlarged portions of the slots. The shaft H is self-aligning and self-locking when it is inserted into the slots 10 and moved into place. If the shaft or roller become worn through use, it is a simple matter to remove the worn unit and insert a new one. This requires a minimum of cost and labor.

The arm D, although integral with the body C, is connected to it by a reduced neck-like portion 11, see FIGS. 2 and 4. The left hand end 12 of the leg 6 of the body C extends vertically and the arm D has an inclined edge 13 that is spaced from the end 12 to provide a recess that can receive an adjustable cam head 14 that is integral with an adjustment pin J. FIGS. 2 and 5 show the pin J mounted in a bore 15 and the free end of the pin has a kerf 16 for receiving a screw driver, not shown, by means of which the pin can be rotated into the desired angular position. The center of the cam head 14 is aligned with the axis of the pin and the outer end of the head is inclined as shown in FIG. 2 and is provided with radially extending serrations 17 as clearly shown in the isometric view of FIG. 4. The inclined edge 13 on the arm D has a rib 18', that is adapted to enter one of the serrations 17 on the cam head 14 to limit the clockwise swinging of the arm D, permitted by the reduced neck portion 11. When the sliding door A is mounted between the two guide tracks F and G, it is moved along the tracks until the rollers E on the arms D of all four corner fasteners C are moved inwardly to their greatest extent. Then the operator takes the screw driver and inserts it in the opening 18 of the door stile 2 that is aligned with the bore 15 in the body C, and rotates the pin J on its axis and with it the intergral cam head 14 until one of the radial serrations 17 on the cam head receives the rib 18' on the arm D, see FIG. 5. This will prevent any further inward swinging of the arm D, as the door A slides along the guide tracks and the resiliency of the arm plus the resiliency of the connecting neck 11 will yieldingly urge the arm in an outward direction so as to keep the roller E in contact with its associate track at all times. The friction between the cylindrical surface of the pin 1 and the adjacent cylindrical surface of the bore 15 will hold the pin in the position into which it has been rotated by the screwdriver.

Plastic material may be saved in the casting of the body C, if recesses 20, see FIG. 4, are formed on opposite sides of the body and a central web constitutes a common bottom wall for all of the recesses. The device has many improvements over other devices of the type disclosed in Pat. No. 3,283,444.

The first improvement is the making of the arm D integral with the body C and providing sufficient resiliency in the material to cause the arm to maintain the roller E on the guide track at all times. This does away with the necessity of using a leaf spring and also eliminates con- 4 structing the body C and arm D in two separate parts and then pivotally connecting them together as is done in the patent.

The second improvement springs from the first one and that is the roller assembly comprising the body C, arm D and roller E can be assembled in the door frame A as a single unit. One labor step or operation is eliminated in that the roller carrying arm D does not have to be attached to the corner member after the body C connects the stile and rail of the door frame together. By making my assembly installable as a single unit in connecting a door stile to a door rail, automatic machinery can be designed to accomplish this, thus cutting down on hand labor.

Another improvement lies in the serrated cam head 14 and its angular adjustment by rotating a pin J. This limits the swing of the arm D and the roller E and prevents the roller from accidentally jumping the track. The novel construction of the roller shaft H and its connection and mounting in the key hole slots 10 in the arm D is a simple way for self-aligning and self-locking the shaft to the arm.

The entire assembly can be cast from materials which are of nominal cost; that is, far less than the cost of constructing the parts for the patented device No. 3,283,444. There will be no corrosion problems because of the material chosen and the plastic parts will need no lubrication. If metal parts were used, lubrication from time to time would be required. Since no metal parts are used in my device, all metallic sounds are eliminated as the door slides along the guide tracks.

I claim:

1. A corner fastener and roller assembly for a frame slidable on a track comprising: a body having a pair of perpendicularly extending legs, one of the legs having an integral resiliently deformable arm, a roller rotatably mounted on a free end of the arm, a cam head rotatably carried by the body, and means defined by the arm adapted to strike the cam head when the arm is flexed in one direction to thereby limit resilient arm movements in the one direction through engagement of the arm with the cam head.

2. A corner fastener and roller assembly according to claim 1 including a pin rotatably mounted in the body and having an end connected with the cam head, wherein the cam head includes radially extending serrations of different depths, and wherein the means for striking the cam head comprises an edge inclined and receivable in one of the serrations when the arm is deformed a predetermined amount, whereby the head prevents further deformations of the arm in the one direction.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,037,555 6/1962 Kochanowski 1697 X 3,283,444 11/1966 Andres 49420 3,510,985 6/1970 Smits 49-425 KENNETH DOWNEY, Primary Examiner U.:S. Cl. X.R. l6--99 

